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We, as members of society, need information when we choose who to befriend, who to do business with, and who to avoid. If people are not free to express themselves, we cannot make good choices.

If you're the type to avoid humor in bad taste, and you find this person offensive, you should be fighting this. Otherwise, at some point, you may find yourself emotionally attached to someone who feels this way, only to find out after the fact. When people bare their soul in a public forum, without fear of repercussion, you can observe and make decisions on how you want to interact with them in private. You can decide ahead of time.

If speaking one's mind is potentially illegal, much important information becomes unavailable as people will be unwilling to speak their minds. You cannot know someone is a racist, or someone is opposed to religious influence, or someone is against liberal governance, or someone has a problem with war. You can't know if they're neo-nazis, and you can't know if they believe politicians should be hanged for war crimes.

You may enter into relationships with these people only to find out much later that they feel a certain way.

The more deeply offended you are by speech, the more you should fight for it to be open and free.

I want to preface this with: I'm an Android user/developer of 5 years, and have no interest in Apple devices. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I apologize for the long-winded post.

Sadly, I find Android is heading in a very bad direction.

Google has captured most of the top of the market, leaving little opportunity for growth, so it appears they've started "simplifying" the UI to capture those with little/no interest in mobile computers, those with less mental acuity or those unable/unwilling to spend a few hours learning the fundamental operating principles of a machine, young children, etc. Same direction Gnome headed in a few years back.

Can't blame them; they are a publicly held corporation, and they must grow. But, unfortunately, simplifying a user interface almost invariably makes it less useful to those who are willing to put in the time to synchronize with the machine.

Just a few more egregious examples of this in the latest Android versions:

Menu button removed

Contextual menus are a extremely powerful. On most modern OSes, right-clicking a control brings up a menu of actions related to that control. Since touchscreens lack a practical way to right-click, the menu button used to implement the equivalent functionality. Some UI designers claim it's inconsistent because you never know if the menu button is going to do anything, and that is a valid complaint. However, removing contextual menus entirely is silly. Many apps run full-screen where an overflow button is inappropriate, and when appropriate, overflow buttons needlessly take up room on the screen and enforce a display layout that isn't always appropriate for every app.

Bafflingly unusable new task switcher

If you haven't seen the new task switcher layout for 5.0, check it out. No longer can you see screen captures of your most recent 5-6 apps, but rather a confusing, battery wasting, user-interaction-required morphing list.

Google Maps feature regressions

Although not directly related to Android, it is symptomatic of Google's general new approach to mobile development. Gone are incredibly useful features like distance measure, zoom controls, sortable place search, place search compass arrows, and many other features that made the old Android maps app so great.

Where are chrome extensions? Native multiwindow support? GNU tools (instead of their godawful "toolbox")? Correctly functioning alt-tab? DNS overrides? Native image backups? Out-of-the-box viper4android? How about forcing manufacturers to add a "delete crapware" button if they want membership to the play store? Where are the extended privacy controls?

The thing is, they already have the "power users" market. So there's no reason to improve the Android core. We've all got CM, AOSP, AOKP, etc., anyway, right?

But it's frustrating, and I do hope some competition pops up to re-address the concerns of those who really use their devices.

The big deal is that it got so many things right back when no one else could figure it out, and that netted them a ton of users (which of course means that most of our friends are probably already on it.

Keep in mind, WhatsApp supported all of these features years ago. It was fast, reliable, simple to install, easy to use... it really was unique. Now everything out there supports all or at least most of this functionality, but it's too late; WhatsApp already has the user base.

Let's face it, driverless buses don't really exist. But so long as we don't regress back into the awful world of proprietary or non-standard extensions, why should buses need drivers outside of those shipped with the kernel?

Wait; maybe I misunderstood. Sorry, I'm using the industry-approved(tm) term "stealing" for copyright violation. Tongue-in-cheek.

I want those making the decisions to understand that I accept the term "stealing" and may consider copyright violation morally ambiguous or even negative. However, I judge the encryption of works restricted by copyright to be so much greater a moral failing that using the even theft is the lesser crime.

I've stopped watching movies, but I know many in my position steal movies not for the price (we're engineers; cost is not an issue), but for the quality and user experience. Honestly, I couldn't care whether movies are $10, $20, or even $30. I care that I can wire someone money, click a button, and start a 10-20gb download of unencumbered, professionally encoded, high definition video.

In the meantime, I spend all of my media dollars on music, since there are multiple sources from which I can actually buy it.

Athiests are occasionally "bigots" with regards to the choices others make, like religion. Religious folks, on the other hand, are occasionally bigots with regards to the properties of others. There is a difference.